


To The Witches I Have Known

by clarketomylexa



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Arranged Marriage, Clextober, F/F, Witches, a sprinkle of teen angst, clarke and lexa are in love, coven rivalry, fighting the forces of darkness, they have fun times together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 18:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16413971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarketomylexa/pseuds/clarketomylexa
Summary: The Woods and the Griffin’s might as well be the Montagues and Capulets of Polis, Connecticut.As the heirs to their family lines, Clarke and Lexa have been juggling the magical politics of their rival covens with normal life since they were old enough to understand. But when a magical incident sparks fears that haven’t been felt since the unsteady truce was made between them – an incident that Clarke is the prime suspect in – both of them are going to have to get much better at multitasking.





	To The Witches I Have Known

**Author's Note:**

> think of this as the chilling adventures of sabrina crossed with a modern day romeo and juliet, except they're gay and nobody dies

“I hate Halloween,” Anya says sourly. She’s in a bad mood. So much so that Lexa doesn’t know whether it’s the recent spiral the weather has taken or her cousin's frostiness that has her fingers into the cuff of her sweater. She would say it was normal—her cousin has never been the easiest to get along with—but she stepped on Wednesday earlier as the cat hogged the watery puddle of sunlight in the hall and didn’t so much as say sorry. Strange because Anya sorely loves the mangey thing, mostly, Lexa thinks, because it annoys Titus. 

“It’s pumpkin spice season,” Lexa suggests in appeasement as they pass the coffee house. 

“Public ridicule season you mean,” Anya corrects her bitterly, shooting a scathing look in the direction of the merrily grinning jack-o-lanterns gathered on the steps of the gazebo. It had been a strange transition into fall. The leaves on the outskirts of the square are still frozen halfway between green and russet but the town committee had descended on the main street on the first of October regardless, with the manic kind of excitement that comes with the prospects of pumpkin carving and scoping out costume options in the dinky corner shop that never seems to realise Halloween isn’t a year-round event. Not that she would ever give Anya the satisfaction but Lexa quietly loves this time of year, despite the silly mockery it makes of them. 

Anya folds her arms over her chest. “If I see one more pointy hat, I’ll be giving out hexes for free,” she promises darkly.

_ “Anya,” _ Lexa’s eyes saucer, whipping her head around the check if they have been overheard but this early, people are too wrapped up in their eight a.m. hunts for coffee to notice the pair. She turns back to Anya, lowering her voice regardless. “You know Titus doesn’t like you saying that,” she scolds her quietly. 

She was seven the first time she realised magic wasn’t commonplace. The enormity of such a secret was almost too big to understand for a girl who had grown up chanting Latin incantations and watching coven meetings through the rungs of the staircase when she should have been asleep, but Titus hadn’t wasted any time sitting her down the week her mother died to drill the importance of her confidentiality into her. 

She had walked around tight-lipped and grey-faced for a month afterwards for fear of retribution. 

Anya snorts loudly. “I think Titus would rather I didn’t say anything at all.” She watches Lexa shift in discomfort. “You know it’s true. I’m barely a Woods, god forbid I have an opinion that doesn’t reflect the coven.” She shrugs her hands into her pockets, stalking alongside Lexa as she says, “I’m here to watch you and that’s it.” 

The truth sits uneasily on Lexa’s chest as she listens to her cousin rant. It’s nothing she hasn’t heard before but she twists the silver band on her ring finger, feeling responsible for it.

Anya is prickly at the best of times, all angles and the sharp lines of the Woods’ and none of the softness Lexa inherited from her father. Lexa doesn’t think Titus ever forgave Anya’s father for his illicit liaisons with a witch from another coven, or for his subsequent disappearance. Lord knows why but she has learnt that her Uncle is more of a paranoid old man than the wise advisor she thought she was when she was seven-years-old and hanging iron off her bed to ward away fairies. He ostracized Anya when they were younger, and is even more reluctant now to give his twenty-two-year-old niece the responsibility that a witch of her age should have—especially considering their family name. In turn, Anya has fully embraced the role of black sheep, vintage leather jackets and all. 

“You’ll always have a job as long as I’m in charge,” Lexa vows, reaching across to take her cousin's hand in hers.  

She couldn’t call her childhood conventional. Since her mother died her care had been transferred to Titus and the coven to raise her as they saw fit, which had meant a rigorous regime of magical theory, and strict practice on top of trying to maintain a normal existence. The normal existence part still has her stumped, but there’s never an excuse not to perform. She is, after all, the eldest direct descendant of the Woods line. As far as the coven is concerned, she’s their property and amongst all the craziness, sometimes she thinks Anya is the only thing keeping her sane.

“Sap,” Anya accuses. The show of affection makes her squirm and she disentangles their hands to cuff Lexa around the head, feigning indifference. “Anyway,” she changes the subject swiftly, tucking her hands into her pockets and scanning the empty square while Lexa tends to her mussed hair. “It’s not about that. Titus can shove it up his own as far as I care. You’re going to be eighteen next year.”

“Is that why you’re walking with me?” Lexa grins. Anya stopped walking her to school in the sixth grade when starting high school had her believing she was too old for lurking on the outskirts of the playground for Lexa afterschool. 

She bumps her cousin brattily with an elbow but Anya stiffens before she can help it and Lexa knows she has struck a nerve. 

“Yes,” it takes a conscious effort on Anya’s behalf to disengage every muscle in her body, but when she does, she elongates her strides and Lexa jogs to keep up, hands tucked inside her pockets as the wind picks up. 

“You’re lying,” she accuses her calmly. 

Her cousin shifts under the scrutiny. 

“How’s Costia?” She deflects 

_ “Anya!” _ Lexa snaps, taking her by the arm and forcing her to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. 

They stare at each other, unflinching for a moment before Anya gives up on the childish competition and snatches her wrist back. “Fine,” she relents gracelessly, massaging feel back into her skin, then nodding in an indication that they should keep walking. 

Lexa acquiesces but eyes her warily with each step it takes her cousin to formulate her answer. 

“There’s been another incident,” she eventually lands on. 

“An incident?” Lexa pounces on the word. 

“Titus didn’t want to tell you.” 

Frustrated, Lexa stifles a biting comment. For all they drill this ridiculous sense of responsibility into her— _ ’you’re almost of age Lexa, the coven must be your focus from now on’ _ —her uncle, and Indra and Gustus for that matter, tend to censor what she is told like she’s still the seven-year-old she was when her mother died.  

Putting a hand on her back, Anya guides her roughly down the nearest walkway between the second-hand bookstore and the coffee house. It smells like stale dishwater and sulphur and Lexa pulls the lip of her sweater up to cover her nose, regulating the uneasy throb in her chest. For as long as she can remember, Anya has never been afraid of consequences, especially where it meant disobeying Titus and her discomfort now is unnerving. 

“Lincoln found a dead dove on the back steps this morning,” Anya says quietly when she seems satisfied they aren’t being overhead and Lexa feels her breakfast curdle in her stomach as she watches her cousin pause to fish something out of her pocket. “This was next to it.” 

The object sits against her hand as she holds it up for Lexa to see, the black ribbon it’s strung on tangled in her fingers as Lexa takes in the intricate design. It looks like a seal stamped into a round of metal, a pentagram inside three rings of tarnished Latin that for all of her afternoons cooped up in the dining room translating ancient text under Titus’ rained eye Lexa can’t decipher. 

Anya hands it over reluctantly and Lexa weighs it in her palm. 

“What is it?” 

She thinks the pattern might be familiar. 

“Titus thinks it was the Griffins.” 

_ “No,” _ Lexa’s head snaps up in alarm.

“Lexa…” 

The door a few feet further down the alley swings open and an acne covered teenager emerges with a black trash bag at this side. Anya falls silent as he throws it in the trash, giving them a confused glance before returning inside. 

“It had their magic all over it,” she informs Lexa curtly when the boy is gone. 

The only other magical founding family of Polis, the Woods had been stuck in a power battle with the Griffin’s since the town was founded. Every other non-mortal family in the area had fallen into either side of the alliance and the magical violence that came as a consequence of the rivalry was said to have gotten so bad it rivalled the terror of the Salem Witch Trials. Gustus used to tell Lexa stories of when he was young to scare Lexa into practising her magic even when every part of her body felt drained and the feather she was levitating felt like a ton of bricks instead. Apparently, four mortals had to end up as collateral damage before Titus enacted the truce. Any act of violence now would be like an act of treason. 

“They wouldn’t dare,” she insists confidently. Titus has had her involved in magical politics since she was old enough to understand it; both covens agreed to the truce, neither would risk the consequences. 

The Griffin’s might be altogether too liberal with their magic but they aren’t stupid. 

Anya purses her lips like she doesn’t agree, keeping her eyes trained on the spot where the alley opens out onto the square like she’s worried hellfire will erupt out of the cobblestones if she continues to explain. 

“Did you know Clarke is back in town?” 

Lexa’s heart leaps, though she pretends it doesn’t. 

“You can’t be serious,” she scoffs instead at what Anya is implying, “you think Clarke did this?” It’s ridiculous, and not just because the Clarke Lexa knows is too preoccupied with practical magic and floating bottles of vodka up to her bedroom from her parents’ sash to be sending malicious omens to the Woods’ doorstep. 

And then there’s the other thing. 

But Lexa doesn’t talk about the other thing. 

Anya throws her hands open in an agitated ‘who knows’ gesture and Lexa fights not to get defensive. 

“I’m not saying she didn’t. She’s a Griffin, Lexa.” 

Lexa hates that that’s an accusation in itself, mostly because ‘she’s a Woods’ has plagued her her entire life; the excuse for lab partners and dodgeball teammates rejecting her. More than any of the curses that are cradled in the aging pages of the books Titus keeps in the upstairs hallway, Lexa thinks having your identity boiled down to nothing but her last time is the worst one of all. 

Her anger at Anya simmers to frustration in the pit of her stomach and she slips the seal into her pocket, watching her cousins face twist in alarm as it disappears from view and shoulders past her out onto the main street. 

“Lexa,” she hears Anya grouse behind her, footsteps harsh on the cobblestones in an effort to catch her. 

Lexa shakes off the hand she lays on her shoulder, doing her best to ignore the awful feeling in her gut. 

“I need to talk to Clarke.”

* * *

 

Polis is just as insignificant as it was when Clarke left it four months ago. The houses are the same—identical picket-fenced McMansions with round-a-bout drives and re-painted Victorians—and so are the Halloween decorations that they pull out every year no matter how cracked or faded the pumpkins become. She’s pretty sure the only thing that happened in her absence is her house plant’s ultimate death on her windowsill—evidently, her half-hearted self-watering charm wasn’t long range.  

Still, she thinks, it’s better than the drafty colonial she spent her summer shut up in. Her grandmother's house was old and dark and far from the fairyland she remembers it being when she visited as a child. 

Instead, the floral wallpaper and upholstery were garish and leering and it was a special kind of betrayal on her parents’ behalf to ship her off to Maine the summer before her senior year. They had never been phased by her frivolous use of magic in the past but one kiss with Finn Collins on the doorstep after homecoming and they were tired of her quote-unquote behaviour and she needed to spend a summer studying under the tuition of her mother’s mother in order to prepare for her imminent eighteenth birthday.

She knows it was a cheap ploy to separate her and Finn before it got too serious—the Collins are notorious for being unreliable allies and magical politics doesn’t take a break for schoolgirl crushes—but she’s upset about it all the same.   

The bell rings for the end of the period and Clarke rises from her desk, rubbing her thumb over the smooth notch in the braided band on her ring finger, a practised motion. She doesn’t know what excuse her parents gave the school for her absence but she can feel her teachers hesitancy to ask as he waves her to the front of the class. It’s suffocating. The Griffins are formidable figures in the eyes of the town—a founding family and steeped in politics both magical and mortal—and it feels like Mr Walker is handling her with kid gloves as he hands her a sheet covering the last few weeks, tells her to read Macbeth and suggests she borrows a classmate’s notes. It’s all so regimented and prescribed, exactly what Clarke doesn’t need after a summer of traditional magic with her grandmother and she feels panic creep up her throat at the thought, nodding stiffly and tucking the work into her backpack as she dashes from the room. 

The building used to be a private residence before it was the high school. Like everything else in Polis the high arched ceilings, wrought iron embellishments and stained glass were leftovers from the gothic revival period that her history teacher—as old as the town itself—loves to go on about. Last year a rumour went around that the back staircase was haunted by the ghost of the last owner, whose grisly death in the late 1880s had been enough to give The Tribune content for four months straight. People seem to have gotten braver over the summer though, because the staircase is packed again—likely because the ‘haunting’ stopped as soon as Bellamy had been busted by a vengeful Octavia, intent on righting the scales after an incident resulting in a broken curling iron, and suspended from magic use for a month. 

Either way, Clarke is unhappy to collide with a trio of rowdy Freshman, shirts shredding and fake blood-soaked. She curses loudly at them for getting the concoction on her sweater, picking it off with her fingernails to no avail before looking up glumly in defeat and freezing. 

Lexa stands halfway down the corridor with her head in her locker, diligently switching out her books for second period. She’s as clean cut as ever in her sensible sweater and neat oxfords and Clarke feels abruptly guilty to watch her scramble the combination on her lock and press her binder to her chest. 

She didn’t tell Lexa she was coming back. 

She didn’t know if she was  _ supposed _ to tell Lexa she was coming back.

Their conversations had gone from numerous to once a week at most and strangely formal at the end of Sophomore year and it had left them in an awkward twilight zone of just friends that neither of them quite knew how to navigate correctly after so many years of friendship. 

_ “Clarke,” _ a shrill voice behind her calls. She turns in time to see Octavia fling her backpack to the harlequin tiles to throw her arms around her neck. A pair of girls mutter as they skirt around them to get down the last of the stone steps but Raven eyes them aggressively as she picks Octavia’s backpack up and they promptly leave them alone. “Freshmen.”

“Ignore her,” Octavia says dramatically, disentangling herself from Clarke to hold her by the shoulders. 

When Clarke looks up, Lexa is gone and she feels something akin to disappointment sink in her chest. 

Octavia cards a hand through her hair, taking her backpack from Raven with a pointed look. “She’s cranky because the truck got scratched.” Her fingers are full of stacking rungs and black nail varnish chipped down to the cuticle but the sight of her friend, just as chaotic as usual, is familiar in a way Clarke didn’t know she needed. 

She feels the vestiges of irrational terror slink away. 

“Last time we take my truck to the lake,” Raven informs the brunette curtly, leaning in to give Clarke a hug. 

“You went to the lake without me?” Clarke demands, appalled. 

They spent the majority of May planning the trip; Clarke’s last hurrah before she was relegated to a life of coven meetings that had been sitting like an ominous black hole at the conclusion of her childhood. It was a weight she wasn’t ready to bear, her friends knew that best, and the thought that they went without her leaves her quietly annoyed.

“You dyed your hair back,” Octavia retorts smartly and Clarke winces.

“My grandmother wasn’t exactly a fan of cotton candy pink.”

The woman—still as spritely as Clarke remembered her being when she was five years old—had rolled her eyes at the audacity of teenagers these days and marched Clarke into the dining room to sit her down and run a silver-backed brush through her hair, muttering an incantation until the home-dye job leached out of her hair. 

She hadn’t heard someone do a verbal spell in years. 

“Boo,” Octavia pouts, reaching up to twist a lock of Clarke’s hair around her forefinger. “I’m not ready for serious Clarke.” Warmth prickles on the skin of Clarke’s jaw and pink starts to crawl up the length of the coil but Clarke bats Octavia’s hand away in alarm, looking around wildly to check if they had been seen. The strict discipline of her grandmother sitting weirdly ingrained in her immediate reflexes.

She adjusts her hair over her shoulder, tucking the now pink-ended lock behind her ear where it isn’t noticeable. “I’m not serious, “she argues. “I’m Clarke.” Raven gives her a dubious look and Clarke squirms in the confines of her sensible outfit. “I am,” she insists oddly affected. “Look, we’re still going to Atom’s tonight, right?” They both nod at her and Clarke sits back on her heels, satisfied. “Great,” she decides, “then I’m going to be one hundred per cent fun, Clarke.” 

Raven slings her arm around Clarke’s shoulders as they walk. 

“God help us.”

* * *

 

Costia has a polaroid of them tucked inside the metal slit of her locker that Lexa notices as she listens to her grumble about the Chemistry pop quiz sprung upon her by an unsympathetic teacher, humming and then nodding as she is accused of not listening. 

She doesn’t know what to make of them exactly. Her and Costia that is. A witch herself, she understands the complexities of the situation Lexa has been born into, and despite all the ways that that simple fact makes her more likeable, it also makes the prospect of them infinitely more complicated. Which is probably why they are hanging in an awkward dimension of hugs that last too long and walking each other to class every other day.

“I’m sure you did well anyway,” she says mindlessly, twisting her ring between her thumb and her finger. 

There are dollar store witch hats strung on fishing wire from the arched ceiling and poster paint cutouts of ghosts and the school initials tacked to the walls. She fixates on the stylised pentagram inside the ‘o’ of All Hallows Eve on a poster advertising a Halloween party in town that no one will attend, and lets the trepidation that’s been clawing at her chest all day swell to a boiling point. The seal sits in her front jean pocket, conspicuous enough that she untucked her sweater from her waistband as she walked into advisory for her own piece of mind.

“Lexa,” Costia says, frowning up at her. When Lexa blinks her brow peaks in concern. “You’re really out of it today,” she says quietly, ducking her chin to try and catch Lexa’s wandering eye. “Did something happen?” 

Shaking her head Lexa wills herself to engage. She hasn’t seen Clarke yet but the need to speak to her grows more urgent with each minute the seal gathers weight sitting in her pocket—the mirror in the second-floor girls bathroom was shattered when she went in this morning and she watched a boy knock a salt shaker over in the cafeteria at lunch. Omens, Titus would say. And whether she believes he’s a paranoid old man or not, something makes her inclined to agree this time. 

“My Uncle again,” she lies pathetically and Costia slides a hand up her arm, scrutinizing her carefully. 

“Anything I can help with?” 

She opens her mouth to assure her that it’s nothing she can’t handle herself—she’s been her uncle’s yes-man for as long as he needed and she can pretend a little longer, until she figures this out and things return to normal—but as soon as she does, a blonde places herself squarely between them. 

“Lexa, are you cheating on me?” She demands loudly, flinging her hand in front of Lexa and pointing to the ring sitting snugly on her ring-finger, “does this mean nothing to you?” The scene is drawing a crowd and Lexa struggles to hide the amused quirk of her lips. 

Rolling her eyes and half-amused, half-exasperated at the theatrics that have been going on since middle school, Costia takes her cue to leave. “I’ll see you tonight, Lexa,” she says, squeezing her hand, then looking over at the blonde she says, “bye, Clarke,” before slipping away and taking the few onlookers with her. 

Clarke twists her ring like it isn’t sitting right under her knuckle and leans a shoulder against the locker, waiting. 

“I’m sorry,” she apologises when Costia has disappeared, tossing her head down the corridor, “she likes you.” 

Lexa doesn’t know how she is meant to respond to that. Grappling for a reply feels like reaching out into a muddy pond in search of answers. “She’s not my fiancée,” she drawls instead and Clarke snorts. It’s ironic, Lexa thinks, that for the amount of weight their so-called engagement holds within the magical community in Polis, it has become such a joke between the two of them. Since the ceremony four years ago—a date which Clarke likes to ironically mark in her calendar as their anniversary and give Lexa cards with ‘To My Loving Husband’ embossed across the front in scripted letters—Clarke, in particular, has taken every available moment to mock the sanctity of the fealty they swore that night to each other and their covens. After a while, compelled by the ridiculousness of it all, Lexa had joined in. 

“How was Maine?” 

Clarke shudders, “four months shut up in a library translating—” she glances around, then lowers her voice, “—incantations that haven’t been used since Salem isn’t my idea of a good time,” she grouses. “I lit a sparkler on the fourth,” she says, “but my grandmother feared for her herb garden so she put it out.” Her face lights up like she remembers something, hand reaching out to clutch Lexa’s arm and all at once, Lexa is five-years-old again and standing in the front lawn with a sparkler in hand. It burns stone cold against her fingers and morphs into technicolour in front of her—blues and purples, greens and oranges twisting in an out of each other. It isn’t the Fourth, she thinks, they didn’t celebrate holidays like that when her mother was alive, but the sky is a watercolour of dusky pink and orange. Midsummer perhaps. 

Then, as quickly as the memory came, it vanishes, leaving her dizzy and faint. She thinks she smells smoke.

“We need to talk,” the world snaps back like an elastic and Lexa frowns, stopping Clarke in the middle of her tangent. 

“Oh,” she sings flirtatiously, posture slackening against the locker so that Lexa is momentarily distracted. 

“It’s serious.” 

“Oh.” 

The bell trills but Lexa leans into the nearest classroom to find it dark, the desks empty and the blinds pulled. She wills Clarke inside, waiting until the is perched on the edge of the nearest desk before pulling the door to and taking the seal out of her pocket. 

“Do you know what this is?” 

It looks oddly mundane hanging from her fingers. In this light, it’s hard to make out the tarnished Latin or the pentagram inside it but it’s ice-cold despite the hours it has spent sitting in her pocket and that’s enough to make her sceptical. Clarke’s eyes saucer and Lexa takes careful note of her reaction. 

“Where did you get that?” 

She opens her palm and the seal sails into her hand as if by magic. Lexa feels the residual pull in her fingertips. She has always been taken aback by Clarke’s liberal approach to magic. While Titus has drilled into her that magic serves a purpose and that purpose is her own personal needs, Clarke seems to find a need for it in every situation. Quietly she thinks she admires the easiness she wields it with because, the truth is, Lexa is too scared of her own magic to do the same. 

“Do you know what it is?” She dodges the question, “the Latin’s illegible but it looks like a pentagram—” 

“It’s not,” Clarke shakes her head putting the seal flat on the desk, ribbon at the top, then turning it so that the pentagram is inverted. Suddenly, Lexa knows where she has seen it before. “This is dark,” Clarke warns her, “black magic devil worshipping dark,” there’s an element of awe in her voice that twists in the pit of Lexa’s stomach, “where did you get it?” 

“There was one on the cover of the book you used to have,” Lexa says calmly. 

“Lexa,” Clarke insists. 

She sighs. “Lincoln found it on the back steps.

Clarke scrutinises her. “There’s more.” 

“Andy thinks it was you,” Lexa admits 

“What?” 

Lexa straightens. “Did you do it?” 

Clarke grows stony-faced at the accusation, she stiffens, fingers closing around the seal as though Lexa is going to snatch it from her and her eyes slam shut. “Do you think I did it?” She fires back, unhappy. 

There’s a whole host of replies Lexa could give her, all of them laced with the political idiocy that Titus likes to spout around the dinner table—elitist bullshit about how the Woods are magically superior in the traditional sense of their how, how the Griffins are liberal pretenders, imposters and manipulators—but none of it has ever translated to Clarke in her mind. When she looks at Clarke she sees herself, a freer version of herself maybe, but still someone stuck in this mess other people have made for them and she can’t knowingly blame her for something Lexa knows she doesn’t have the capacity to do. Not the Clarke who punched John Murphy in the nose in the second grade because he made fun of Lexa for wearing her clothes inside out after her mother died because she was seven years old and sure that it was fairies that had killed her. 

“No.” 

Clarke deflates in relief, letting out a heavy sigh and sifts her fingers through her hair, shaking out blonde locks until Lexa can see a pink streak among them. The colour shimmers slightly like a mirage in a way that makes Lexa suspect it isn’t drugstore hair dye and she fixates on it to calm her breathing. 

“I didn’t,” she hears Clarke promise in a voice that it's barely there and when Lexa looks up their eyes meet. 

“I believe you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@clarketomylexa](https://clarketomylexa.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading!


End file.
